This week
The Budget on Wednesday 28 October 2026 set the Graduate visa at two years "for individuals who graduate from high-compliance universities where there are strong labour market outcomes" (paragraph 6.97) (source). Everyone else's graduates get 18 months from January 2027. The Budget does not say what high compliance means, what a strong labour market outcome is, or how many universities will qualify. Nobody in government has said since. The Spotlight reads the first condition as the 5% refusal limit, the only compliance line the Home Office has published, and estimates which universities would pass it. It then asks what the second condition could mean, using the graduate outcomes data the government already holds.
The same afternoon the Department for Education published a new impact analysis for the international student levy, which the Budget itself does not mention (source).
In other news last week, Times Higher Education said it will close BMI GlobalEd, the student recruitment fairs business it bought in 2022, by the end of 2026, because pressure on the sector "has made our business hard to sustain" (source).
The numbers
The Department for Education now expects universities in England to lose about £1bn in international fee income over the first three years of the levy, up from £900m in its November 2025 estimate (source). The yearly figures are £280m, £350m and £380m from 2028-29, which add to £1.01bn. At the same time it expects fewer students to be put off: 11,500 fewer enrolments a year by 2033/34, compared with 16,500 a year in the November 2025 analysis (source). The PIE News described the 11,500 as a total over seven years (source). The department's table shows it as a yearly figure. A new table in the analysis, from Alma Economics, expects the lowest-ranked universities to lose 11.2% of demand for every 10% rise in fees, sixteen times the 0.7% it expects at Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial. Takeaway: the department's new view is that most universities will not be able to add the £925 to their fees without losing students, so they will pay it themselves. If your 2028 budget assumes you pass it on, it is now more optimistic than the government's.
International applicants to UK undergraduate courses by the 15 October deadline fell 7.3%, to 22,560 (source). UCAS published the figures on 29 October 2026. The deadline covers medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and courses at Oxford and Cambridge, about 10% of a year's applications. Applicants from China fell by 9.0% and from the United States by 16.4%. Takeaway: these are the courses and universities least exposed to the refusal limit, and their international demand still fell. How much of your own 2027 undergraduate pipeline is from China and the United States?
Ministers are prepared to spend up to £450m a year compensating universities so that EU students pay home fees, if the EU lets British firms into its Made in Europe industrial scheme (source). The Guardian reported on Sunday 1 November that Treasury officials have costed several scenarios. The £450m is the most expensive, with fees at the home rate and very high demand; one official called it "speculative". EU officials want their students to pay just over £9,000 a year, and the two sides are due to settle it at the Brussels summit on 20 November. The offer is about fees only, and neither side has offered the loan back, as Issue 26 reported. Takeaway: Issue 26 found that EU undergraduates left when the loan went, and a lower fee without a loan does not bring back the students who need to borrow. If your 2027 EU forecast rises on this news, what is fuelling that assumption?
Policy watch
The High Potential Individual visa will open to graduates of the top 150 institutions in the world, with a proportional increase to its cap (Budget paragraph 6.96) (source). The route lets recent graduates of listed overseas universities work in the UK without a job offer. The Budget does not say which ranking will define the 150 or when the change starts.
BUILA has asked for the Home Office's red, amber and green ratings of universities to stay unpublished (source). Stuart Easter, chair of BUILA, wrote in The PIE News on 27 October 2026 that amber ratings should work as internal early warnings. Publishing the ratings, he said, could be read as a judgement on academic quality. If Budget paragraph 6.97 follows the BCA, the length of a university's Graduate visa would tell applicants which side of the line it is on.
Spotlight · Sector · Who gets two years?
The Budget brings back the two-year Graduate visa for "high-compliance universities" without saying which. If it follows the refusal limit, we estimate 57 of 130 universities and colleges would miss out.
Paragraph 6.97 of the Budget is one sentence long. It gives two years on the Graduate visa to graduates of "high-compliance universities where there are strong labour market outcomes" (source). It does not define either term or say how many universities will qualify (source). The Home Office has one public measure of compliance, the Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA), and one line that everyone in the sector knows: a refusal rate under 5%. Wonkhe expects "highly compliant" to mean a green BCA rating, which needs a refusal rate under 4% (source). We have estimated which side of both lines 130 universities and colleges are on.
On refusal rates for the year to June 2026, 57 of the 130 are over 5%. The other 73 would qualify. If the test is green, the 11 we estimate between 4% and 5% drop out too, leaving 62. In students, 41% of the 571,545 full-time international students at the 130 are at a university over 5%, and 52% at one under 4%. Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute told Times Higher Education on 30 October that he expects "between a quarter and a third of mainstream universities" to qualify (source). That would need a stricter test than either line.
The method is the one The PIE News and Higher Insights used for mission groups on 14 September 2026, applied to each university (source). We took each university's full-time students by country from HESA for 2024/25, gave each one the Home Office refusal rate for that country in the year to June 2026, and averaged (source) (source). The 130 are every provider with at least 500 such students.
The result is an estimate of exposure, not a BCA score. It cannot see how a university screens applicants or how many withdraw. It uses the 2024/25 intake, and many universities have cut South Asian and West African recruitment since. Seven of the 130 are within 0.2 percentage points of a line. And it uses the year to June 2026, the gentler basis: on April to June 2026 rates alone, 88 of the 130 would be over 5%. Two checks say it is in the right place. Across the 130 it averages 4.3%, close to the Home Office's current 4.6% refusal rate. And of the seven universities marked "Subject To Action Plan" on the Home Office register of 30 October 2026, five are in the upper half of our estimates (source).
We have grouped the universities by the Department for Education's 2024/25 tariff bands, with the 24 Russell Group universities and the five other high-tariff universities together. The line in the chart falls between that group and everyone else. All 29 are estimated under 4%. Below them, tariff makes almost no difference: medium tariff universities average 6.3% and low tariff 6.4%. What does differ is the spread. Within the medium and low tariff groups, 27 universities are estimated under 4% and 55 over 5%. Being selective does not put a university over the line, and not being selective does not either. Dundee and Aston, high tariff until 2024/25, are now medium tariff and over the line.
What decides it is where a university's students come from. The refusal rate for Chinese applicants in the year to June 2026 was under 0.1%. For India it was 4.2%, for Nigeria 11.7%, for Bangladesh 14.5%, for Ghana 16.5% and for Pakistan 18.9%. A university's estimate is nothing more than its mix of those numbers.
The pies explain the first chart. The high-tariff group is under the line because it is a China market: 44% of its international students are Chinese, and 87% come from countries the Home Office refuses less than 4% of the time. India is the market everyone else is built on, 29% of medium tariff students and 38% of low tariff, and India's rate is 4.2%, just inside the amber band. If India's rate rose to 6%, seven more universities would cross 5% and seven fewer would be under 4%. No other single number moves the estimate as much. The two-year visa would also follow students' passports. In our estimate 91% of Chinese students are at universities under 4%. For Indian students, 65% are at universities over 5%; for Nepali students 75%, Nigerian 83%, Bangladeshi 86% and Pakistani 89%. An Indian applicant's own chance of refusal is the same wherever they apply; what changes is the visa their degree leads to.
The second condition, "strong labour market outcomes", has no agreed measure. The closest official one is the Office for Students' progression rate, the share of graduates in professional work or further study 15 months on, which the OfS already uses to regulate English universities (source). It counts UK graduates only. We matched it to our estimates for 99 English providers.
If "strong" means the OfS minimum, the second condition changes nothing: 96 of the 99 clear 60% for first degrees, and 99 of 100 clear 70% for taught master's. The refusal rate would do all the work. If "strong" means better than most, the two conditions pick mostly the same universities. Those we estimate under 4% have a median progression rate of 76%; those over 5%, 71%. A test set at the median would remove 11 universities that are under the refusal line and rescue none of the 44 over it, even though 13 of those 44 are above the median on outcomes. A university with good graduate outcomes and a high refusal rate gets nothing for the first.
None of this measures international graduates. The OfS figure covers UK students because too few international graduates answer the survey: one in five, against more than half of UK graduates (source). For the international graduates who did answer, 2023/24 leavers at the 104 providers with at least 100 responses, the pattern is weaker. At universities we estimate under 4%, 12% were unemployed 15 months on; at those over 5%, 14%. The share in full-time work was 58% on both sides of the line. And a university's home graduates say almost nothing about its international ones: the two unemployment rates do not move together. There is a third possibility. "Strong labour market outcomes" may not be about universities at all, but about subjects. The Budget's other visa changes are written around occupations and salaries, and a graduate in nursing or engineering has a labour market outcome whichever university taught them. A test by subject would cut across the refusal line entirely. Whichever measure the government picks, it will be judging universities' international graduates by their home graduates, by subject, or by Home Office data nobody outside Whitehall has seen. Until it says which, your guess is as good as ours.
Things to think about this week:
The Home Office does not expect to publish its ratings before summer 2027. If your own refusal rate is under the line, would you say so now, before an applicant works it out from the visa your graduates get?
How does your market mix compare with the average for your tariff group?
If your graduates get two years, which markets would you grow? If they get 18 months, which would you cut? If the same markets are on both lists, the Graduate visa decides your recruitment plan whichever way the definition goes.
Jobs · Who's hiring
University of Hertfordshire, Director of Marketing, Admissions and Student Recruitment, closes Wednesday 11 November (source).
University of Sheffield, Head of Student Recruitment (Lead Generation), closes Friday 20 November (source).
Newcastle University, Head of Student Recruitment and Marketing, Faculty of Medical Sciences, closes Sunday 8 November (source).
The last word
The government has not said that a two-tier Graduate visa is what it intends. Favour Samuel, president of the National Union of Students, said the announcement "does nothing but increase the confusion surrounding this scheme" (source). On our estimate, a Nepali student applying for January 2027 has a 4.1% chance of refusal wherever they apply. Which visa they graduate into depends on where they chose to study.
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